Boy Overboard

At the airport, the family waits in a cramped bus for half the night before they are finally driven to their plane. As they leave the bus, the driver tells them that after their flight, a boat will meet them for the next leg of their journey. All the passengers look worried, and Mum says that she hopes these “smugglers” can be trusted. As they approach the plane, Mum looks scared, but Jamal consoles himself with the ancient candlestick, which will protect them on the flight. However, when the guards scan their bags for metal objects, the alarm doesn’t go off, puzzling Jamal, who knows the candlestick is solid metal. Probing the rucksack with his hands, he realizes that the candlestick is not there. Mum tells him that she and Dad have sold the family heirloom to buy passage to Australia. Now, he sees why his parents are so distraught: They have placed the family’s lives “in the hands of criminal smugglers and [their] ancestors aren’t protecting [them] anymore” (97).

As the plane takes off, the family feels sadness and fear. Jamal misses his friend Yusuf and vows to himself that he’ll get a job in Australia and buy Yusuf a soccer ball to replace the one that was blown up. As they gain altitude, Jamal tries to console his family by saying that the plane will shoot back if attacked. Mum tells him that passenger planes don’t have guns. This adds to his worries. He reflects that, with no candlestick to look after them, his family will have to look after each other.

After the flight, the family are made to stay in a house for days and then forced to wait on a dock overnight to board the boat that will take them to Australia. There are two people-smuggling boats docked just on the other side of the fence, and Jamal’s family has not been told which boat is theirs. Both the boats are rickety-looking fishing vessels, and dozens of passengers must fit into them. As Jamal and Bibi practice soccer on the dock, many of the refugees seem shocked to see a girl playing sports. Someone tackles Jamal: It is the same gloomy-looking boy from the camp who tried to steal his ball. The boy claims that the ball is his since he showed Jamal the way back to his tent. Outraged, Jamal reminds him that he didn’t show him the way but instead went running after the United Nations car. Bibi joins in the fray, tearing off her headcloth and insulting the boy. Grappling for the ball, the boy tells Bibi that they can keep the ball if she’ll be his girlfriend. In response, she kicks the boy and then propels the ball out of his reach with a tremendous kick that sends it soaring over the fence and into the sea.

Just as Jamal’s soccer ball falls between the dock and the boat, the smugglers open the gates for boarding, and the crowd surges forward, sweeping Jamal and Bibi’s parents toward the farthest of the two boats. Mum and Dad wave their rucksacks frantically at them, but Bibi insists on trying to save the soccer ball, ignoring Jamal’s protests. She says that without the ball, they’ll never become soccer stars and save their country. The gloomy-looking boy volunteers to get the ball out with a stick but loses his balance and plunges into the water. Jamal shouts for help, but the crowds ignore him. He runs up to a man in yellow overalls who looks like a sailor and tries to drag him to the edge of the dock; the man has a long-hooked pole that looks like a rescue tool. The man doesn’t understand Jamal’s language and slaps him when he tries to grab the pole. In response, Bibi kicks and bites the sailor, who picks her up and flings her into the water.

As Bibi vanishes into the “churning water,” Jamal jumps in after her. After sinking helplessly for several seconds, he sees Bibi’s face in front of his own and desperately wraps his arms around her and tries to kick his way to the surface. As his arms weaken, Bibi tightens her grip on him, but they continue to sink. Jamal feels a strange pain in his back, and they are abruptly pulled to the surface: The sailor in the yellow overalls has hooked them with his pole and thrown them onto the deck of one of the boats. As soon as he sees that Bibi is safe, Jamal remembers his parents and pulls himself to his feet, shouting their names. Looking over the gunwale, he sees a horrifying sight: His parents are on the other boat, which is pulling away. Jamal, Bibi, and their parents stare at each other and shout in panic, powerless to stop the boat, which is picking up speed.

Jamal tells Bibi that they can still radio the other boat to turn back. He appeals to the sailor in yellow overalls for help, but the man just scowls and spits on the deck, nearly hitting a mother and her baby. Bibi shouts at him, calling him “slime out of a lizard’s bottom” (116), and tries to hit him with a rolled-up umbrella. Jamal blocks the blow with his own body, but the sailor advances angrily. Luckily, one of the smugglers, a big man, breaks it up and tells the sailor to get back to work: The boat is about to cast off, and every hand is needed. Jamal tells the smuggler that their parents are on the other boat and asks him to hail it by radio or track it with radar. The smuggler curtly replies that the boat has no radio or radar and threatens to throw them overboard if they don’t shut up. Jamal keeps his arms tight around Bibi to keep her from flying into a violent rage, telling her to be patient if she wants to see Mum and Dad again. Hearing a familiar voice, Jamal turns to see the gloomy-looking boy behind him, clutching his soccer ball: Someone must have pulled him out of the water, too. The boy introduces himself as Omar. Jamal and Bibi introduce themselves and give him room to sit down. As the boat casts off, Jamal tells the other boy that they’ll be in Australia soon, but Omar isn’t optimistic.

The first day of sailing finds many passengers on the crowded vessel, including Omar, seasick. Jamal and Bibi have not yet gotten sick, perhaps because their father’s taxi made them used to rough rides, but they feel hungry. Finally, the passengers all line up for noodle soup, but the sailor with yellow overalls who had a run-in with Bibi is serving the soup. Jamal notices that the person in front of him is completely hidden under a blanket. As they near the soup pot, the blanket bursts into flames from the cooking fire due to the clumsiness of the sailor. Jamal pulls the blanket off and extinguishes it. He recoils in shock to see the person who was under it: a teenage girl in revealing clothes and lots of makeup. Her hair is uncovered, and she has “black stuff on her eyelashes and her lips are green” (121). Jamal has never seen anyone like her, and probably neither has the sailor in the yellow overalls, who refuses to give her any soup. Bibi angrily protests since it was the sailor who caused the fire, but the girl gently restrains her. What’s important, she says, is that the two of them get safely to Australia and be reunited with their parents.

Jamal and Bibi, also denied soup by the sailor, try to ignore their grumbling stomachs. A kind woman offers Jamal her tin of soup, but he sees that she has three small children and declines. The teenage girl introduces herself as Rashida, a boy’s name: Her parents’ firstborn was a boy who died, so when she came along, her parents gave her his name. Omar, who was eavesdropping, breaks in to say that they were “horrible parents” to do that. This angers Rashida, who says that her parents loved her very much: They saved their money for years for this trip, and when they found out that it could only buy one ticket, they let her have it. Seeing that Jamal, Bibi, and Omar have no food, Rashida shares some sardines and water with them. In return, Jamal offers to teach her how to bounce his soccer ball from one knee to the other while sitting down. Omar repeatedly interrupts their conversation, citing the terrible things that could happen on their long voyage—sharks, whales, and typhoons—and Rashida tells him to shut up. Peeking into Rashida’s suitcase, Jamal sees something of great value to them all: a big bag of flour.

Jamal has made a large batch of bread dough with Rashida’s flour, salting it with seawater and kneading it in a plastic bucket. Now that the “nasty” sailor is asleep, he’s divided it into flat loaves and is baking it on the diesel engine below deck. He hopes to share it with a lot of people and has his hands full trying to keep the sailors from pulling the loaves off the engine before they’re done. He notices with trepidation that water has been seeping into the boat and is now up to his knees in the engine room. He decides not to worry Bibi and the others with this news.

As they eat the bread, Jamal notices that the waves are getting bigger; for the first time, he feels seasick. Rashida adjusts the knotted T-shirt she has put on his head to keep off the sun and gives him more water. Looking at the sick, hungry people all around him, and thinking of the many more days of suffering that stretch before them, he reminds himself again of the wonderful destination at its end: Australia, a land of plenty, with a “kind government.”

One morning, Jamal wakes to find that he’s no longer seasick. He also notices a “blissful” silence on the boat and then realizes that the engine has stopped. The chief smuggler tells the passengers that, due to a “mistake,” they all were undercharged for the voyage and must each pay him another $100 or else the boat will turn back. The chief smuggler says that Australia is still six days away and that the way back is only three days. When the passengers protest, the sailors threaten them with wooden clubs. The sailor in yellow overalls confiscates Jamal’s bread bucket and throws into it the refugees’ last valuables. Jamal, Bibi, and Omar, who have no money or valuables, look at each other in panic. In lieu of the $400, Jamal offers his last two loaves of bread, but the sailor tosses them into the sea. Rashida saves the day by surrendering an expensive watch given to her by her father, who bought it with the last of his savings: “He knew this would happen” (134), she says. Finally, the smugglers are satisfied with their haul, and the boat continues on its way.